There's an organic wholegrain of truth in the notion that parenting website Mumsnet is stuffed with competitive mothers honing homemade weaning recipes and obsessing over their children's reading-scheme level. Even so, no platform catering for such a broad-based interest group can consist entirely of parents who would resort to murder if it meant bumping their kid up the waiting list of a school with an outstanding Ofsted. That's not to say that the compendium of wisdom culled from the Mumsnet message boards is warm and cuddly, but it does come with a milk-stained, sleep-deprived ring of truth, advice that has little to do with routines and "philosophies" yet can offer guidance on how to react when somebody in the supermarket tells you that a tantrumming child "needs a slap" or your grandmother refuses to call your baby by the name you have chosen. No book will please all mothers, all the time, but for those days when there's weeping and wailing  and the kids are playing up too  it's a little bundle of reassurance.